What Does the WSJ Gain by Calling PewDiePie Ant-Semitic?

Imagine yourself at your job, and somebody who works at a different company decides that they might benefit if you were to be fired. So this person goes through every Facebook post, tweet, and Instagram photo you have ever posted and takes just a few lines out of a few of your post. Decides to make a video with some doom and gloom music with to paint the picture that you hate Jewish people and then sends that video to your boss. Your boss then decides that it is not worth the trouble of fact checking this and decides to fire you. Since the accuser says that they are going to publish in a major media outlet and that would bring bad press to their company. Sound far-fetched?

Unfortunately this is PewDiePie’s new reality. There has been a recent article and Youtube video by the WSJ bashing vlogger PewDiePie for having anti-Semitic post. It’s funny because you can’t read the article unless you pay a subscription fee to the Wall Street Journal. Which is ironic in itself the “Wall Street” Journal bashing a Youtuber. Why target PewDiePie you say? Because PewDiePie at the time of the WSJ Youtube video came out had 53,311,044 subscribers February 14, 2017.

Let’s do a little scenario. If 100% of the 480,573 people who subscribe to the WSJ Youtube channel at a minimum have subscribed to the WSJ introductory website subscription to read their articles that would amount to a gross revenue of $480,573. Now lets target the most popular Youtuber ever and if less than 1% of PewDiePie’s subscribers want to read the article and pay the WSJ the $1 to read the article, it would amount to the same amount of gross revenue as if 100% of their current subscribers were to read the article. Now lets say 10% of PewDiePie’s subscribers pay the $1 to view the article, it would result in $5.3 million dollars in revenue.

This is sad that these 3 guys and the Wall Street Journal decided to publish this out of context material, bring it to PewDiePie’s employers and get him fired over it. Disney makes sense since Walt Disney was anti-Semitic himself and the Disney brand does not want to be painted in that picture anymore. A little sad that Youtube Red decided to drop PewDiePie after the post. However, this could be a blessing in disguise. When British Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson punched the producer and was essentially fired from the BBC, Amazon Prime decided they would pick the show up or at least a rendition there of. Which resulted in a much higher budget for the show and higher pay for the presenters. So hopefully some great production company such as Amazon Prime or Netflix decides that they would like to make a show with PewDiePie.

It’s ever so unfortunate that people choose financial gain at the expense of others. In this case a few people writing for the Wall Street Journal decided to exploit PewDiePie and his popularity to get a viral post, financial gain, and a little popularity for themselves. It is even more sad that it worked and now not only has PewDiePie lost his contracts, over a hundred people that were working on his show are now out of a job. I hope that we all can learn from this, and that doing anything at the expense of others is not okay. We should all strive to do things that are mutually beneficial or at the least not detrimental to others.